Andy Kindler Gives the Funny Business Its Annual Review

Andy Kindler in Los Angeles in 2013, evaluates colleagues and routines at Just for Laughs.CreditCreditMike Windle/Getty Images

Look out, Jerry Seinfeld. You are in Andy Kindler’s cross hairs.

After nearly two decades of delivering his popular State of the Industry speech at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, Mr. Kindler has become known as a fierce ombudsman of comedy, an in-house critic whose scathingly funny annual address is a mix of stand-up, roast and rigorous argument. He wields a hammer (“Adam Carolla is like Hitler if Hitler wasn’t funny”) as well as a switchblade. (About the end of Craig Ferguson’s CBS talk show, he quipped, “He’s going to go out like he came in: barely trying.”)

This year’s speech is on Friday, and Mr. Kindler sounded energized about it in an interview last weekend. He said he would cover Bill Cosby and James Corden but would focus on the controversial interview in which Mr. Seinfeld said college audiences had become too politically correct. “I’ve been studying it like the Zapruder film,” Mr. Kindler said, before chuckling over Mr. Seinfeld’s claim that young people like denouncing racism but don’t know what the word means.

“I love the idea that they don’t know what racism is, but he does because he grew up in ... ,” Mr. Kindler stopped, pausing for dramatic effect, “Massapequa, that hotbed of racial unrest.” Then he shifted from a wry tone to that of a lawyer laying out the facts of the case: “Massapequa is 1.7 percent black. The median income is $100,000 a year. The first black person Jerry met was George Wallace,” the comic.

Mr. Seinfeld’s comments have already received plenty of criticism online, where debates about jokes have a ritualistic quality with the familiar two-step of critics finding punch lines offensive followed by comedians defending themselves by citing the right to free speech. Mr. Kindler often cuts through this tedious dialogue, approaching subjects from an insider’s perspective but without dogma. He has an ear that’s sensitive to hype and a contrarian’s delight in going against the grain, which is why no one is better at poking fun at Louis C. K. That comic’s much-publicized habit of doing new material every year drew Mr. Kindler’s cutting sarcasm. “Louis C. K. was this close to coming up with the unified field theory,” he said in 2012. “Just one more day. One more day. But he had to move on, because everything is fresh and new.”

In recent years, Mr. Kindler, 58, has staked out eloquent arguments rooted in the idea that just because an audience laughs doesn’t mean the performer is immune to criticism. “You don’t have a right to control how people react,” he said.

He also has little patience for Mr. Seinfeld’s claims that political correctness is chilling comedy. “There’s no incident here — he doesn’t play colleges, he didn’t lose a booking,” Mr. Kindler said, exasperated. “Lenny Bruce’s career was ruined by language. You’re going to whine about your perceived inability to talk about stuff.”

Mr. Kindler has always been a comedian with the mind of a critic. After starting in 1984 in a double act (with Bill Kaufman), he went solo two years later and followed his first joke told onstage with a critique. “Well, that didn’t go well,” he said.

In a conversation at Ben’s delicatessen near Times Square, Mr. Kindler, warm and feisty in person, talked about his work in a questioning style similar to his stand-up, which provides a running commentary on itself throughout the set. After saying he would never go on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — he does a very funny bit in his act about how if Stalin were a guest, the host would ask him to play charades — before shifting to a lower voice: “Side note: This would be terrible if I did go on Fallon.”

Despite their reputation for cynicism, comics tend to be more trusting of the crowd than most artists are, assuming that if a joke gets laughs, it must be good. A fascination with pandering to crowds has animated Mr. Kindler’s entire career. He cited a turning point in the late 1980s when he asked the stand-up Al Lubel for feedback, and he said Mr. Kindler was getting easy laughs. “A light bulb went off,” Mr. Kindler said. The audience isn’t always right.

His State of the Industry speech is an outgrowth of an article Mr. Kindler wrote for National Lampoon in 1991 called “The Hack’s Handbook: A Starter Kit.” With tongue in cheek, it argued that originality is for fools, laying out rules to follow for the stand-up seeking a shortcut to glory. “It was the first time I really got positive feedback from other comics,” Mr. Kindler said.

The programmers at Just for Laughs saw the article while looking for morning shows that weren’t merely panels of comics and asked him to adapt it. In his original speech, Mr. Kindler also brought in other comics to demonstrate the stoner comic, the road comic and other examples of hacks.

“He basically did the article live, and it absolutely killed,” said Bruce Hills, the director of programming who is now chief operating officer of Just for Laughs. Mr. Hills booked him again, and the address quickly became a favorite among comics, moving from a small space in a hotel to a sold-out 600-seat room. It’s now a much-anticipated event, with people tweeting the most provocative lines and an audio recording released online to a global audience.

Mr. Hills said he had heard complaints from comics who are mocked. So has Mr. Kindler. Criticizing Adam Sandler for making poor movies had repercussions. “I saw Sandler at Ken Ober’s memorial,” Mr. Kindler said, recalling the event honoring that comic. “He said ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit you.’ ”

Mr. Kindler cited his speech about Louis C. K. as one of his favorites, but also the one that drew the most troubling reaction. “It threw me off my game because of blowback from friends,” he said. “I walked around questioning my motives. Am I doing this because of envy? I think that’s in there. But when I add it up, I did it for the right reasons.”

Mr. Kindler is quick to add that Louis C. K. and Mr. Seinfeld are great comics who make him laugh, but like any good critic, he holds them to high standards. “I’m not too worried about Jerry’s fans going after me,” he said, flashing a mischievous smile. “What, will people show up at my house in puffy shirts?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Giving the Funny Business Its Annual Review. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe